BTT #42: Blood

On By Lona GyntIn Poetry

blood cells

Blood

·
How do we regard
This constant stranger
Running always in
And through us
Bringing gifts
As a fountain, quietly,
Nourishing but never
Wending past edges of the
Waking dreams and
Visions it only ever
Carefully feeds?
·
Unless…
We sometimes see
A red round drop
Flattened starkly against a
Clean white plate
When a knife slips while cooking
Or if a razor nicks our skin.
·
Also…
In either the arms of
Loving passion
Or the clutches of solitary
Longing it brings waves of
Fire to our brains,
Confusing all our plans and
Shifting our formerly
Certain foundations.
·
And Finally…
When at last it either
Seeps through or
Oversteps with violence
Beyond the fragile boundaries
Of the stream to
Become tributary to all the
Rivers, joining tides that
Pound and billow to both
Build and carry off the
Sands of every
Distant Shore,
Will we then know our blood
As it mingles
With the salts of all
That was or will be?
Perhaps we will be
Wiser then, but not
Likely to be smarter.
Will we both alternately
Rise and curl with the
Breakers, or merely fall?
Will we feel the
Quiet premonition,
That water may be
Thicker after all?
·
–  Lona Gynt,  September 2019
·
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Linked on dVerse Open Link Night (OLN) hosted by Mish.
Come on over and join us on an open poetry trail.
Here is the link:
·
IMG_0804
Above image by Lona Gynt, All rights reserved for post text and this image to Lona Gynt, September 2019.  Image at head of post is from pixaby.com and is labeled for free use, but I did buy the image author a cup of coffee.

 

44 thoughts on “BTT #42: Blood”

  5. Interesting metaphor of blood as streams and rivers flowing to the sea.
    I think of all the historical connotations of blood–the humors, the leeching, the belief that menstrual blood was filled with sin and evil, but then there are also blood bonds and blood brothers. . .

    Your last lines are very thoughtful.

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  11. This took me on a journey, just like blood to different paths and to places I didn’t expect. The first two stanzas, so wonderful but I think they were warming me up, building up to a finale of profound thought. I was very intrigued by this!

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    1. Thank you Björn, what we leave behind certainly flows to the sea. Whether anything persists is the question, my heart tells me it does, but this poem doesn’t attempt to answer that (need Wordsworth for that I guess), but I do feel the oceans and the elements bind us, and our at the very least miraculously configured or possibly even designed to consider the gifts of blood and waters. I am comforted that we are all in this boat together. I had peripherally the bonds of blood and family and humanity my mind with this one. The knowledge we have of these connections, this love is ultimately more important than faith and hope. I am glad you liked this Björn, glad to be in this ocean wit ya. 🙂

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    1. Blood ha so many spiritual connections, little wonder it figures so prominently in so many religious emblems. And the biological realities are so complex and amazing they are hardly to be believed. Thank you for such a kind notice 🙂

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  15. Well…..I am very late to the reading — I was drawn so far into your words in this one, Lona. I have to admit, I was drawn in, in fear. Before I started to write my comment here…I read others replies. No one seems to have responded with the dark response I had – and for that I am glad. These words
    “Unless…
    We sometimes see
    A red round drop
    Flattened starkly against a
    Clean white plate
    When a knife slips while cooking
    Or if a razor nicks our skin.”
    and then the continuance of the blood flowing, the rivers, the connections. My read here was of suicidal thoughts….and thus the fear I felt…feel…reading this. There is a foreboding….and then, to end with only questions…no answers…no affirmation.
    May I just say….I love your writing. I hope you’ll join me in today’s quadrille — I’m hosting. And how I’d love to see a sense of affirmation and positive ness. Okay — will go back to everyone elses’ comments here rather than mine.
    See you at the quadrille!

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  16. Thank you my friend. Your concerns open some tender doors, so I am taking the liberty of a longish response. I have had suicidality, and have even been within a hair’s breadth in the past. Much of that had centered on the pain (which I have found can have a surprisingly overt physicality) of intensifying gender dysphoria. Much of this pain has been attenuated by medically transitioning over the past several years even though I am not socially transitioning. I have written about this at length here:

    https://lonagynt.wordpress.com/2017/06/26/btt10-miracles-of-astounding-normalcy/

    and here:

    https://lonagynt.wordpress.com/2018/05/10/btt-32-hair-cut-non-transitioned/

    But I did not have any suicidality on my mind when I wrote “Blood,” even though a large amount of social gender dysphoria pain is with me daily. The haircut poem listed above actually seemed to exorcise the daily longing for a slow bullet, writing helped. In any event I have covenanted with God, and my wife, and my other loved ones, that if I ever felt like I had to just fully transition or die, by golly, circumstances be gosh-darned, I’m just going to go all out girl rather than die. Life is too precious and already, too short and full of too many good things to purposefully waste.

    I wrote “Blood” about 8 months ago, and only now place it here. Suicidality was not on my mind, but mortality certainly was, as were the bonds of family and humanity that connect us. We all find so many disparate spiritual paths, but you feel one can always count on your family, but that really we are all part of the same human family and we are bound together with the same exigency of mortality, and although I personally believe in the immortality of the soul, I feel that even for those who do not, the fact that we are all bound up in the mortality together, the fact that we all flow to the sea (whether through natural or violent deaths), that perhaps the adage that blood is thicker than water needed to be set on it head, flipped if you will, to show we should be able to transcend the boundaries of sect, party, tribe, or even family to all be one – since we are all in the same boat. You are correct to have had a dark reading, but only in so far that the darkness cannot always be edited out in danger of not being able to perceive the light. Thank you for your kindness and your concern… I hope this is not too long winded. I will probably take a break from dVerse for a couple weeks, since I am working on an essay for my next post, but I have said that before, and the quadrille prompt has a way of drawing me back in, it is so addictive. Hugs my friend:
    Lona.

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  17. SMiLes.. FriEnd Lona Gynt.. Truly Wouldn’t A World Of Life Be A More Loving Place
    if the Water of Love were Truly Thicker than the Tribal Nature in instinct that Says
    Those of us from Within our Family as Nature Are Closer as Us in Blood Relations
    than Them over tHere.. True as Bonobos Do Clearly Show even in their Rather Furry
    Ape SKin this Will Work Great in Societies of Furry and Close to Even Hairless Apes
    of Less than 150 to 200 Members of the Group as that is what Science Best Suggests
    is our Limit of Numbers
    of Acquaintances too.. we are
    Familiar With in Extended Family
    of Love as Water as Great Now as
    Blood Ties of Core Families Closer too
    but Push the Boundaries Much Further
    than that and as far as we go so much Further now even
    More As Politics of Laws and Common Bonds of Traditions
    in Religions are Required to keep Big City Folks Together
    Particularly in Environments of Desert Arid SCarCiTies
    where one’s Body Must Be Covered Enough to
    Keep what Humidity is Left to Cool the Body
    off Before it Withers and Dies with little
    Physical and or Love Water Left
    to Live on to Survive and
    Perhaps Far from Thrive
    Alive now for Real..
    Smiles.. my FriEnd
    ‘That Older Testament
    God of Gaslighting Reality” in Terms
    of Blood Sacrifices of Children who are Different
    and Rapes of Virgin Daughters Blamed on Daughters
    instead of Fathers is on Trial Again this Week by the Daughters
    Coming Back to Spit on their Graves Against their Free WillS AGAiN..
    An Endless Story it is for Some of Us Enjoy the Water of Love and others
    of Them Stay Red With Blood of Fear and Hate and all the Fresh Hell that still
    Shores with the Beauty of Love Ocean Whole more.. Red Tide it is the Raping
    And Pillaging As Male HeARTs Less.. Life may Be Verily a Bloody OrDeaLiaN Way
    of DArk for Many but in my place the Water of Love will aLWays be Thicker than the Blood of
    Exclusion Different.. but on the other Hand in a Society as Big and Complex as this someone
    has to make their Entire Life Dedicated to making the rules now for Basic Survival for the Masses
    at Hand.. Peter Pan will not do that so Captain Hook Will continue to Rule Himself and make
    my Neighborhood
    Safe enough
    at
    Least
    To Float
    on Terrestrial Land Free
    but only Wearing Green is not for me..hehe..
    as sure i check in to Red and Blue as Balance too..;)

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  18. Oh, I am feeling the surge of blood in reading your words out loud — they create a symphony perchance similar to the ripples of the pounding and billowing blood — you capture that vivacious rhythm so well in your biological and symbolic exploration. Blood is life in its most basic form perhaps; its flow is similar to the flow of the ocean bubbling and bursting with life — the mythical salty brine from whence everything came and where everything would return. And yet it is such a “stranger” to us, lining every distant shore, mingling with “the salts of all that was or will be”.
    Also, ending it that way is so clever. Loved it, in simple words. Ha! 🙂
    -HA

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  19. Superb. Blood is like God in our love and fear of it. I have to admit I never grasped the meaning of that phrase, ‘blood is thicker than water.’ Isn’t it a greater quality of the physical world to be “thinner”, to be able to permeate any surface? Anyway, your meditation was absolute and I don’t want to “water” it down with any more talk:)

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    1. Thank you Amaya, I am mulling over your first sentence, mulling and mulling… 🤔
      Where does the fear arise in regards to something we so desperately need every moment? I am glad I’ve finally been able to show this to you. It’s been waiting a while to come into circulation.

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